Were these whistleblowers and honest journalists, who alerted us to the determined attack on our civil liberty, rewarded with invitations to the White House and given medals of honor in recognition of their service to American liberty? No. Bradley Manning is in federal prison, and so would be Julian Assad and Edward Snowden if Washington could get its hands on them.

Anyone paying attention knows that 9/11 has been used to create a police/warfare state. Years ago NSA official William Binney warned Americans about the universal spying by the National Security Agency, to little effect. Recently Edward Snowden proved the all-inclusive NSA spying by releasing spy documents, enough of which have been made available by Glenn Greenwald to establish the fact of NSA illegal and unconstitutional spying, spying that has no legal, constitutional, or "national security" reasons. Yet Americans are not up in arms. Americans have accepted the government's offenses against them as necessary protection against "terrorists."

Neither Congress, the White House, or the Judiciary has done anything about the wrongful spying, because the spying serves the government. Law and the Constitution are expendable when the few who control the government have their "more important agendas."

Bradley Manning warned us of the militarization of US foreign policy and the murderous consequences, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks posted leaked documents proving it.

Were these whistleblowers and honest journalists, who alerted us to the determined attack on our civil liberty, rewarded with invitations to the White House and given medals of honor in recognition of their service to American liberty?

No. Bradley Manning is in federal prison, and so would be Julian Assad and Edward Snowden if Washington could get its hands on them.

Binney escaped the Police State's clutches, because he did not take any documents with which to prove his allegations, and thus could be dismissed as "disgruntled" and as a "conspiracy kook," but not arrested as a "spy" who stole "national secrets."

Greenwald, so far, is too prominent to be hung for reporting the truth. But he is in the crosshairs, and the Police State is using other cases to close in on him.

These are only five of the many people who have provided absolute total proof that the Bill of Rights has been overthrown. Washington continues to present itself to the world as the "home of the free," the owner of the White Hat, while Washington demonstrates its lack of mercy by invading or bombing seven countries on false pretenses during the past 14 years, displacing, killing, and maiming millions of Muslims who never raised a fist against the US.

Many commentators have written articles and given interviews about government's ever expanding police powers. The totality of the American Police State is demonstrated by its monument in Utah, where an enormous complex has been constructed in which to store every communication of every American. Somehow a son or daughter checking on an aged parent, a working mother checking on her children's child care, a family ordering a pizza, and sweethearts planning a date are important matters of national security.

Some educated and intelligent people understand the consequences, but most Americans perceive no threat as they "have nothing to hide."

The Founding Fathers who wrote the Bill of Rights and attached it to the US Constitution did not have anything to hide, but they clearly understood, unlike modern day Americans, that freedom depended completely on strictly limiting the ability of government to intrude upon the person.

Those limits provided by the Founding Fathers are gone. The hoax "war on terror" demolished them.

Today not even the relationships between husband and wife and parents and children have any protection from arbitrary intrusions by the state.

Essentially, government has destroyed the family along with civil liberty.

Those insouciant Americans who do not fear the police state because they "have nothing to hide" desperately need to read Home-schooled Children Seized By Authorities Still In State Custody.

In Police State America, authorities can enter your home on the basis of an anonymous "tip" that you are, or might be, somehow, abusing your children, or exposing them to medicines that are not in containers with child-proof caps or to household bleach that is not under lock and key, and seize your children into state custody on the grounds that you present a danger to your children.

The government does not have to tell you who your accuser is. It can be your worst enemy or a disgruntled employee, but the tipster is protected. However, you and your family are not.

The authorities who receive these tips treat them as if they are valid. A multi-member goon squad shows up at your house. This is when the utterly stupid "I have nothing to hide" Americans discover that they have no rights, regardless of whether they have anything to hide.

We owe this police power over parents and children to "child advocates" who lobbied for laws based on their fantasies that all parents are serial rapists of children, and if not, are medieval torturers, trained by the CIA, who physically and psychologically abuse their children.

In the opinion of "child advocates," children are brought into the world in order to be abused by parents. Dogs and cats and the fish in the fishbowl are not enough. Parents need children to abuse, too, just as the Police and the Police State need people to abuse.

Of course, sometimes real child abuse occurs. But it is not the routine event that the Child Protective Services Police assume. A sincere investigation, such as was missing in the report on the home-schooled children, would have had one polite person appear at the door to explain to the parents that there had been a complaint that their children were being exposed to a poisonous substance in the home. The person should have listened to the parents, had a look at the children, and if there was any doubt about the water purifier, ask that its use be discontinued until its safety could be verified.

But nothing sensible happened, because the Police State does not have to be sensible.

Instead, a half dozen goon thugs show up. The parents are put outside in the snow for five hours while the children are scared to death with questions and then carried away from their home, mother, and father.

In Police State America, this is called Protecting Children. We owe this tyranny to the idiot "child advocates."

It is no longer important to protect children from homosexuals, unless the homosexuals are Catholic child pedophiles. But it is absolutely necessary to protect children from their parents.

So, yes, dear insouciant American fool, whether you have anything to hide or not, you are in grave danger, and so are your children, in Police State America.

You can no longer rely on the Constitution to protect you.

This is the only way that you can protect yourself: grovel before your neighbors, your co-workers, your employees and employers, and, most definitely, before "public authority" and your children, as your children can report you. Don't complain about anything. Do not get involved in protests. Don't make critical comments on the Internet or on your telephone calls. Don't homeschool. Don't resist vaccines. Turn your backs to leaders who could liberate you as it is too dangerous to risk the failure of liberation. Be an abject, cowardly, obedient, servile member of the enserfed, enslaved American population. Above all, be thankful to Big Brother who protects you from terrorists and Russians.

You, dear insouciant, stupid, American are back on the Plantation. Perhaps that is your natural home. In his masterful A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn documents that despite their best efforts the exploited and abused American people have never been able to prevail against the powerful private interests that control the government. Whenever in American history the people rise up they are struck down by brute force.

Zinn makes totally clear that "American freedom, democracy, liberty, blah-blah" are nothing but a disguise for the rule over America by money.

Wave the flag, sing patriot songs, see enemies where the government tells you to see them, and above all, never think. Just listen. The government and its presstitute media will tell you what you must believe.

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here. His latest book, How America Was Lost, has just been released and can be ordered here.

The footage – originating from a department store security camera and forwarded to the BGA by a source – shows the much larger officer pummeling the 34-year-old woman in front of her infant daughter. After knocking the woman to the floor, the officer rains numerous blows to her face and head, according to the video, which was authenticated by authorities.

HEBRON, KY — Police charged into a darkened field trying to arrest teenagers for consuming alcohol without government permission, and killed a young woman, a preschool teacher in the process.

Family of woman shot by law enforcement feels she was murdered... Pfister’s family says that the mother of two children posed no threat to police and that she had been reported as a hostage.”

His seven-year-old daughter, Aiyana Mo'nay Stanley-Jones (PDF), slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. Outside, Television was watching them. A half-dozen masked officers of the Special Response Team—Detroit's version of SWAT—were at the door, guns drawn. In tow was an A&E crew filming an episode of The First 48, its true-crime program. The conceit of the show is that homicide detectives have 48 hours to crack a murder case before the trail goes cold. Thirty-four hours earlier, Je'Rean Blake Nobles, 17, had been shot outside a liquor store on nearby Mack Avenue; an informant had ID'd a man named Chauncey Owens as the shooter and provided this address.The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. It was unlocked. They threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of the lower unit and kicked open its wooden door, which was also unlocked. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana that it burned her blanket. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commando—who'd been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWAT—burst into the house. His weapon fired a single shot, the bullet striking Aiyana in the head and exiting her neck. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

enhanced theatre: looks good on TV... crashing through unlocked doors, throwing 'flash-bang grenages', shooting people, killing people... all with the right camera angle...

and the advertising revenue, wow ? ? ?

17-Year-Old Kristiana Coignard Shot and Killed by Three Police Officers

It's hard to imagine if she walked into a police department in nearly any other country in the world that she would've died in a barrage of bullets.

On Friday, January 23, 17-year-old student Kristiana Coignard walked into her local police department, picked up a telephone, and asked to speak to an officer. Sometime after that she pulled "a weapon" and was shot and killed by three police officers.

For three days, that's pretty much all the police have said. Refusing to say what type of weapon she brandished, the inference was that it was so lethal a weapon that it must've been a gun or a stick of dynamite or hand grenade, but Longview Mayor Jay Dean just revealed that it wasn't a gun at all, but a knife.

Coignard was living in Longview with her Aunt, Heather Robertson. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Robertson raised questions about the circumstances of Coignard’s death. “I think it was a cry for help. I think they could have done something. They are grown men. I think there is something they are not telling us.”

Robertson said that her niece had been struggling with mental illness, including depression and bipolar disorder, since her mother died when she was four. She had been hospitalized twice in recent years after suicide attempts. One time, she tried to hang herself. Another time, she drank toilet bowl cleaner. Since arriving in Longview in December, Coignard had been taking medication and regularly seeing a therapist. She had no criminal record and “was only violent with herself, ” Robertson said.

It's hard to believe, no matter what the circumstance, that the only option available to the Longview police department was to shoot Kristiana over and over again.

In London, a depressed man struggling with mental illness got two large knives and pulled them out in front of Buckingham Palace, but the police, trained on how to surround and subdue a man like him with nonlethal force, did so in less than a minute.

In an Economist article entitled "Trigger Happy," the true story of just how quickly American police are willing to shoot and kill people is made frighteningly clear:

Last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012 the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.

This is a public safety crisis. While our nation may have more guns than many others, it's disgustingly obvious that our police are shooting and killing people who are unarmed and often mentally ill and it must stop.

I begin with an insight offered by Professor Carroll Quigley (1910—1977), who taught history to Bill Clinton at Georgetown University. He had such a profound impact on Clinton that Clinton referred to him in his 1992 nomination acceptance speech. Quigley is famous among conservatives for his book,Tragedy and Hope(1966), in which he devoted 20 pages to the connections between Wall Street banking firms and American foreign policy, which has been dominated by the liberal left (pp. 950ff). But Quigley was also an expert in the history of weaponry.

One of his books, Weapons Systems and Political Stability: A History, was printed directly from a typewritten manuscript and is known only to a handful of specialists, was a 1,000-page history of weaponry that ended with the Middle Ages. In Tragedy and Hope, he wrote about the relationship between amateur weapons and liberty. By amateur, he meant low cost. He meant, in the pejorative phrase of political statists, Saturday-night specials.In a period of specialist weapons the minority who have such weapons can usually force the majority who lack them to obey; thus a period of specialist weapons tends to give rise to a period of minority rule and authoritarian government. But a period of amateur weapons is a period in which all men are roughly equal in military power, a majority can compel a minority to yield, and majority rule or even democratic government tends to rise. . . .But after 1800, guns became cheaper to obtain and easier to use. By 1840 a Colt revolver sold for $27 and a Springfield musket for not much more, and these were about as good weapons as anyone could get at that time. Thus, mass armies of citizens, equipped with these cheap and easily used weapons, began to replace armies of professional soldiers, beginning about 1800 in Europe and even earlier in America. At the same time, democratic government began to replace authoritarian governments (but chiefly in those areas where the cheap new weapons were available and local standards of living were high enough to allow people to obtain them).According to Quigley, the eighteenth-century’s commitment to popular government was reinforced — indeed, made possible — by price-competitive guns that made the average colonial farmer a threat to a British regular. Paul Revere’s midnight warning, “The regulars are out!” would have had no purpose or effect had it not been that the “minute men” were armed and dangerous.With this in mind, let me present my thesis.THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS FAR TOO WEAKThe Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution asserts the right — the legal immunity from interference by the State — of American citizens to keep and bear arms. This means a rifle strapped to my back and a pistol or two strapped to my hip, day or night.It doesn’t go far enough. It leaves guns in the hands of a subculture that has proven itself too irresponsible to carry them: the police.If I were called upon to write the constitution for a free country, meaning a country no larger than Iowa, I would require every citizen to be armed, except members of the police. A policeman would have to apply for an on-duty gun permit. He would not be allowed to carry a gun on duty, just like England’s bobbies are not allowed to carry them.Every child, male and female, beginning no later than age six, would be trained by parents regarding the moral responsibility of every armed citizen to come to the aid of any policeman in trouble. Unarmed people deserve protection.Children would be also taught that the first person to pull a gun to defend an unarmed policeman or any other unarmed person deserves the lion’s share of the credit. Late-comers would be regarded as barely more than onlookers. This is necessary to offset the “Kitty Genovese phenomenon.” In 1964, this young woman was attacked and murdered in full view of 38 onlookers, in their Queens, New York, neighborhood. Despite her screams for help, no one even bothered to call the police. This is the “who goes first?” problem.Anyone so foolish as to attack a policeman would be looking down the barrels of, say, a dozen handguns. “Go ahead, punk. Make our day!”

A policeman would gain obedience, like James Stewart inDestry Rides Again, through judicial empowerment. He would not threaten anyone with immediate violence. He would simply say, “Folks, I’ve got a problem here. This person is resisting arrest. Would three of you accompany me to the local station with this individual?”He would blow his whistle, and a dozen sawed-off shotguns accompanied by people would be there within 60 seconds.Every member of society would be trained from an early age to honor the law as an adult by being willing to carry a handgun. Everyone would see himself as a defender of the law and a peace-keeper. Guns would be universal. Every criminal would know that the man or woman next to him is armed and dangerous. He would be surrounded at all times by people who see their task as defending themselves and others against the likes of him.The only person he could trust not to shoot him dead in his tracks for becoming an aggressor would be the policeman on the beat. The aggressor’s place of safety would be custody.There would be another effect on social life. When every adult is armed, civility increases. In a world of armed Davids, Goliaths would learn to be civil. The words of Owen Wister’s Virginian, “Smile when you say that,” would regain their original meaning.The doctrine of citizen’s arrest would be inculcated in every child from age six. Then, at the coming of age, every new citizen would take a public vow to uphold the constitution. He or she would then be handed a certificate of citizenship, which would automatically entitle the bearer to carry an automatic. Note: I did not say semi-automatic.THE EXPERIENCE OF ENGLANDIn England, where the police have not carried guns for well over a century, violent crime remained low until the mid-twentieth century. This changed when the government began banning the private ownership of guns. This development is presented in full academic paraphernalia by Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm in her book,Guns and Violence: The English Experience(Oxford University Press, 2002). Dr. David Gordon summarized her findings in a recent book review in The Mises Review.She proceeds by a learned study of violent crime in England, from the Middle Ages to the present. In her survey, a constant theme emerges. As guns became more prevalent, violent crime decreased. This trend culminated in the nineteenth century, when death by murder was rare but guns were widespread. The seizure of guns during the twentieth century has been accompanied by a marked increase in violent crime. At present some types of violent crime are more common in England than in America. As usual, the statists have their facts exactly backward.

Professor Quigley would have understood the following bit of historical information.Developments in the eighteenth century should by now come as no surprise. “[A]t the very time that the individual right to be armed was becoming well established and guns were replacing earlier weapons, the homicide rate continued its precipitous decline” (pp. 88—89).But Professor Quigley’s most famous student and his wife would not understand this:Readers will not earn a reward for correctly guessing Malcolm’s conclusions about the nineteenth century. Once again, the number of guns increased while violent crime declined. “The nineteenth century ended with firearms plentifully available while rates of armed crime had been declining and were to reach a record low” (p. 130). So far, we have a vast example of an inductive argument. Increases in the prevalence of guns have always accompanied decreases in violent crime. Does this not strongly suggest that guns in private hands deter crime? The twentieth century, especially its latter half, gives us a chance to test our induction, since ownership of guns during that period came under strict control. If it turns out that violent crime increased, then as Hume once remarked, “I need not complete the syllogism; you can draw the conclusion yourself.”And of course violent crime did increase. “Scholars of criminology have traced a long decline in interpersonal violence since the late Middle Ages until an abrupt and puzzling reversal occurred in the middle of the twentieth century . . . a statistical comparison of crime in England and Wales with crime in America, based on 1995 figures, discovered that for three categories of violent crimes — assaults, burglary, and robbery — the English are now at far greater risk than Americans” (pp. 164—65).Gun control advocates, faced with these facts, will at once begin to yammer uncontrollably, “a correlation is not a cause.” Indeed it is not; but in this instance, a strong correlation holds in two ways: when guns increase in number, violent crimes decrease, and when guns decrease, violent crimes increase. Further, a plausible causal story explains the correlation: the prospect of armed resistance deters criminals. This is about as good as an inductive argument gets. But I do not anticipate that those who wish to take away the right to self-defense will alter their position. They aim to make everyone totally dependent on the all-powerful state.SELF-GOVERNMENT UNDER LAWFUL AUTHORITY

Unarmed police, now fully deserving of protection by gun-bearing citizens, would gain immense respect. They would rule by the force of law, meaning respect for the law, meaning widespread voluntary submission by the citizenry. This is properly called self-government under lawful authority. The policeman’s word would be law. He just wouldn’t be armed.A criminal would not escape from the scene of the crime by shooting the cop on the beat. He would not get 20 yards from the cop’s body.Citizens would regard a law enforcement officer as they regard their mothers. They would do what they were told with little more than rolling their eyes. If anyone physically challenged a police officer, he would risk facing a dozen Clint Eastwoods who have been waiting for two decades to get an opportunity to make their day.To make this system work, the courts would have to enforce strict liability. Injure the wrong person, and (assuming you survive the shoot-out) you must pay double restitution. Kill the wrong person, and you must pay the ultimate restitution: eye for eye, life for life. But no faceless bureaucrat hired by the State would do the act. A group of armed citizens will execute you under the authority of the court. Remember, the police are unarmed.The fact that citizens in no society think this way is evidence of how well the defenders of State monopoly power have done their work. They want their agents armed and the rest of us unarmed. A free society would reverse this arrangement.CONCLUSIONThere are those who will reply that my proposal is utopian, that civilians do not have sufficient courage to come to the aid of an unarmed policeman. Furthermore, they will complain, the common man is not sufficiently self-disciplined to live under the rule of law as I have described it. Both objections have validity. I can only respond by pointing out that a society in which its citizens possess neither courage nor self-discipline is not a free society. I am not here proposing a technical reform that will produce a free society. Rather, I am describing why freedom has departed from this nation ever since, for lack of a better date, 1788.